The Worst Companies to Work For: M Modal

Updated on February 3, 2015

Medical Transcription Services

M Modal is a medical transcription services company. It is the largest clinical transcription service in the U.S. according to its web site.

What is a clinical transcription service? Not a lot of people are aware that when they enter a hospital, their case becomes a record. That record takes a number of forms. One of those forms is paper records. Another form is the doctor's notes that the doctor dictates into a recording device. Those notes are then transcribed by a medical transcriptionist so that the record can be stored and used as necessary. M Modal provides this service to hospitals and doctors.

Beware of working for M Modal (US-PD)

How Do They Treat Their Employees?

No matter what the business, a company is measured by how it treats its employees and by any measure, M Modal treats its employees like disposable garbage.

Aside from the fact that the company has been shipping many of its jobs to India and reducing its American work force to save money, the company has found unique ways to destroy morale among its American employees.

All of M Modal's American transcriptionists work from home, which saves money on office space, rent, and other such costs. However, M Modal has instituted some interesting policies regarding work hours. Among them is this policy:

NO UNPAID TIME OFF

Now, if this sounds absurd, that's because it is. In other words, if an employee is sick, their child is sick, they just want to ski, or some other of the possible million explanations why somebody might need a day off, M Modal requires their transcriptionists to make up those days. This places M Modal's transcriptionist supervisors and its transcriptionists in some unusual situations and creates some morale-busting scenarios:

Transcriptionist supervisors are required to be on-call 24 hours a day and have a computer and a cell phone with them at all times - even while on vacation.

When the father of an M Modal transcriptionist became terminally ill, she requested time off to take care of him. The company refused her request and she was forced to quit. Several months later, the company attempted to hire her back, adding insult to injury.

An M Modal employee had the horrific experience of having her son die. On her way to the funeral, her supervisor called her to come into work. When the situation was explained to the manager, the employee was still requested to come into work. The employee quit.

And actually, this isn't being fair to M Modal because there is such a thing as unpaid time off, which is when there's no work. So when a transcriptionist reports for scheduled hours and there's no work, they're told to take time off and report it as "excused - no work". This is unpaid, of course.

EMPLOYEES MAKE LESS THAN MINIMUM WAGE

When a company treats its employees like disposable parts, such behavior can often be partially tolerated if the pay is good. That is not the case with M Modal, which has consistently lowered the pay rate of its employees to the point where many of them don't make minimum wage. You see, transcriptionists aren't paid hourly. They're paid according to production. In other words, the more the transcriptionist produces, the faster they type, the more they make.

The average medical transcriptionist (MT) makes about 8 cents per line and transcribes about 200 lines per hour. This translates to $16/hour. Unfortunately, M Modal relies heavily on speech recognition and it only pays its transcriptionists 4 cents per line to edit the transcription produced by speech recognition. Since most of the work is now editing, most MT's are making $8/hour. This isn't for flipping burgers remember. This is highly skilled labor.

Now, the lower pay rate might be justified if the work were easier, but it's not. In fact, it's about the same, if not harder. Although the speech recognition is supposed to learn, many doctors transcribe their records while on cell phones or with food in their mouths. Many doctors have various accents the software has trouble recognizing. Some transcriptionists estimate the speech recognition software is no more than 10% accurate.

TRANSCRIPTIONISTS MUST BE 99.5% ACCURATE

Name an industry, any industry, where the employees must be 99.5% accurate? While it's not uncommon for businesses to maintain efficiency standards, M Modal tells its employees that they must be 99.5% accurate or they will get their pay docked (when many of its employees already make less than minimum wage). When many of the doctors who do the dictation speak English as a second language, talk while eating or on a cell phone, and talk so fast they can't be understood, this requirement is absurd. Yet, not only are professional people who are already working for peanuts getting their pay docked, they've also been told they will never receive a raise. And if more than 5% of a transcriptionists work is sent to quality control, their pay is docked further.

SHIPPING JOBS OVERSEAS

M Modal is sending as much dictation overseas as they can so that they can save money. However, even in India, where M Modal sends their work, the employees aren't happy. That must be because they're paid $40/week.

Would you accept these condition in a job?

A Horror Story

Working for M Modal is a horror story. Independent chat boards for company employees show that almost nobody enjoys working there. This is no surprise. With company policies for time off that are reflective of a company that doesn't value its employees and pay that falls significantly below minium wage in many cases, M Modal has become a company nobody wants to work for, but some have to, because they have no place else to go. M Modal treats its workers like replacable parts and its company's policies reflect that.

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Comment here if you work for M Modal 3 comments

Alienhelp 3 years ago

I worked for this company in India few years back. They are no better here, rather I would say they are worst than the description given here. They would make people work in night shift and would deduct salary without any reason. They also do not provide medical insurance when one of my colleague was taken ill.

JudyMT 3 years ago

I once worked for that company that is currently known as MModal. Months after I had resigned and UPS had retrieved MModal's equipment (after I had to keep calling the company to get the pickup scheduled), I received a certified letter from the company, stating that legal action would be taken if I didn't return their equipment immediately (the equipment that had already been picked up by UPS). Thank goodness, I had kept my UPS-pickup receipt.. Working for them was just plain awful..

Mary Berthelot 3 years ago from Gramercy, Louisiana

I am a highly qualified medical transcriptionist/QAS of 24-1/2 years who came to M Modal from Memorial Medical Center Baptist after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 much to my chagrine, as that had been a dream job. I eventually worked up to a Quality Assurance Specialist in 2007 only to be dropped down to what they labeled an MME which was nothing more than an underpaid do-everything worker bee, from being paid by the hour which was measly at best to cents per line.

What else did M Modal not do for me as an employee, you ask? Well there is a position called Quality Coach for which I am amply qualified which is basically a teaching position just a notch above what used to be my Quality Assurance Specialist position, was essentially the former team leader position before one of many re-vampings by the company. When I say one of many re-vampings, I am referring to when they constantly fire, demote, move around, etc., higher-ups who apparently were not doing such a great job or maybe that particular group of accounts was sent off to an overseas branch of which we had many (because M Modal seems to like to send all of our jobs over there and use us to train them), and so they would try to hurriedly find that manager a new job inside instead of just outright letting him or her go. Hence, I was constantly looked over time and again for the QC positions for this reason, at least that is what I believe, because I know there had to be one after all those years kept passing and none? I actually had something to teach, something to offer, and I would not have really had to use my hands that much to do it, certainly not typing 8 hours a day anymore! But no way, Jose! I made too much money to ever replace me in that capacity. If they took me out as a transcriptionist, these golden fingers would mean some executive's kid wasn't going to get braces or a new lease on a car!

What am I driving? A 2001 Ford F-150 that I bought in 2009 off the lot, half owned by Cash Cow because I had to pawn the title last month to pay the light bill. I was never poor in my life as I have always worked and I came from a hard working, though relatively upper-middle class family, yet somehow recently I have run out of gas twice and I have bounced a few checks and am actually scared if I do not get the money from the Hartford this time, or if I have to apply for SSI, I may actually end up in jail, and for what? Because I worked until I physically couldn't anymore, and some a-hole at an insurance company doesn't see enough proof on paper in front of him. Nevermind that I no longer have insurance, nor could I afford to pay for whatever tests I would need to have done to somehow "prove" how bad the arthritis is in my hands for them to give me money on which to survive until, God forbid, Social Security decides to make some sort of decision on my behalf. I asked a lawyer about suing M Modal but apparently there was no angle that spelled enough zeroes for him and he dismissed me, just like everyone else.

Finally after all these years of killing myself working this hard, the arthritis and now overlying carpal tunnel for which I refuse surgery (not that I could afford it anyway seeing as how I no longer even have a job since I've been terminated) have finally done me in and I've had to rely upon my so-called short term disability carrier, The Hartford, which kindly just dropped me after 4 months, telling me that there is no evidence that there is still anything wrong with me and that I should just go ahead and go back to work, nevermind that I was just terminated the day after my last check was paid, a whole $55, and that I cannot even write my own name, let alone type 8 hours a day, and that the treatment is actually as bad if not worse than the disease itself. I do not seem to qualify for financial aid for myself and my son. I have filed for Social Security disabilty, as I have more than just the arthritis and carpal tunnel with which to deal, as I am a type I insulin-dependent diabetic with nephropathy, extremely hard of hearing from, you guessed it, my job, have very bad eyesight though not from diabetes, have emphysema, severe anxiety-related nerve problems and depressive symptoms stemming from the last several months' financial problems and fight with the insurance company not wanting to give me what I feel is rightfully mine since I paid the premiums out of every check, and I probably missed a few as my hands hurt from typing this.